Lightning That Lingers
by strawberriesxpizza
Summary: Reposted // Troyella // She lives in a world of innocence and romance. He lives in a world of garish lights and pulsing music. Is their love strong enough to create a world they can share? Rating may change. // I need at least 5-10 reviews to update
1. Chapter 1

A/N : I found this story in a book my grandmother has, and it's authored by Sharon and Tom Curtis. It was published in 1983, and I wanted to turn it into a Troyella story! Since they're so passionate it's kind of easy for me to write. I have no clue how long this is going to be, chapter-wise. It's too long to be a one shot. I'll stop typing now, but I need to add one last tidbit:

I don't own High School Musical, Kenny Ortega does, I think. I don't own this story either.

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Gabriella Montez, the young woman who had faked the flu in her high school days for the entire four weeks when her class was studying reproductive biology, the young woman who had almost expired with embarrassment at a university Art History class when asked to speak on the merits of Michaelangelo's David -- Gabriella Montez, who'd spend a lifetime of twenty-four years misplaced in an era of sexual liberation, of which she had expressed no interest in, was about to attend a club with flashing neon bright lights and where men took of their clothes to the music.

**HSMHSMHSMHSMHSMHSMHSMHSMHSMHSMHSMHSMHSM**

From the outside, the Coup de Grace had somewhat of a deceptive coziness, like a family restaurant serving catfish fries on Friday nights. Inside was another story. The stage act was more sizzling then the fish fries being cooked behind the scenes. In fact Gabriella didn't realize until she was actually within the clapboard white walls that the place was more than the popular nightclub which her four best friends, in a spirit of joyous mischeif, made it out to be. Light had begun to dawn on her when her eyes caught the prestigious gift shop which merchandised the club's nightshirts, bumper stickers, posters with a suggestive picture of a male silhouette dancing, and calenders featuring the incredibly toned bodies of dancers in a throat tightening stages of undress, and a questioning piece called a "go-naked pen."

Turning to her four companions, trying to look like a woman who thought of this as if it was all in good fun instead of one who was likely required to be removed from the club on a stretcher. She muttered words of disapproval under her breath. Her words brought laughter to the group because none of the four women with her had known long enough to realize that after one glance at the club's provocative logo, Gabriella's stomach had started to solidify. And because she didn't want to seem like a party pooper, it was the last thing she wanted her friends to suspect. She had been in Albuquerque only three weeks working at a little vintage thrift store. Gabriella had come at her friend Sharpay's invitation tonight. Sharpay, a tall friendly and feisty woman, worked in retail. Somehow she accomplished a remarkable amount despite the impression she gave of always being on the way to the back room for some drinks and a cigarette. Sharpay's younger sister, Jennifer had come also, and her friend Kelsi. They were leaning over the merchandise counter attired with straight leg jeans, white blouses and 3 1/2 in. heeled suede strap stilettos; looking like models from a page of the Speigel catalog.

As they walked into the packed cavern of the nightclub, Gabriella and her friends looked through the candles flickering on many tables to the ominous, empty stage that seemed to occupy most of the room. She turned to her second friend, Taylor.

"I see a free table in the back corner --" Gabriella said, trying to be as far way as possibly

"Oh no," Taylor said with a wolfish smile. "I definitely think we should sit closer."

"_Very _close," added Sharpay.

They ended up directly in front of the grand stage, which was raised just enough to put anyone on it a thigh level with Gabriella's nose. When she protested in a suffocated voice that could kill her, they thought she was just using her wit. Admission was for women only. It was an attractive crowd that ran the gamut of ages, though the concentration seemed to be of women in their twenties and thirties. And not one of them would have looked out of place in a meeting of the local PTA or at church choir practice. They were letting down their hair with the weekend-away-from-home exuberance of farm implement salesmen at a convention. The young male waiters, draped in next to nothing, were receiving rather risque answers when they came to tables asking for orders with a simple "What would you like?"

Mounting the stage wearing a clinging knit dress, the Mistress of Ceremonies had geranium-red lips and looked like she'd have become someone's mistress, with the lack of ceremony.

"Ladies who come here are usually celebrating something," she observed, and looked around the capacious room, randomly choosing tables, asking for the occasion sweetly. There was a party for a young girl soon to get married, and a group of student nurses who'd gotten their caps, a woman departing for the Air Force, and a divorce. There was a busload of bank employees from Chicago. They were toasting the night with margaritas and cosmos, in a way that would most likely have started a stampede of investors withdrawing money.

"Albuquerque girls know how to party _hard_!" The emcee grinned. "And that's good. Let's take a poll, ladies, How many of you have never seen any man besides your husband or boyfriend in the altogether? Let's see hands!"

Many hands rose. But not Gabriella's. Her hands welded themselves to the sides of the chair.

"Enlightenment awaits!" promised the M.C. in high good humor. "Tonight you're going to see everything, and I mean, _everything _of three gorgeous guys and find out how the men in your lives" --she winked-- "measure up!"

Amid the howling approval around her, Gabriella tried to sink as low as possible into her chair without disappearing under the table; she spared a thought for her poor mother, receiving the news that her only daughter had suffered a fatal heart attack in a nightclub with male strippers.

She made it halfway through the first act, but when the macho hunk onstage five feet from her dropped his hands to the waistband of his skin-tight glitzy slacks, and made teasing motions with his hips that indicated he was going to divest himself of them, she vanished into the restroom.

Feeling like an idiot, a coward, and a mouse creeping out of a knothole, she emerged when the music and explosion of whistling and foot-stomping applause had faded into the lower roar of excited conversation that signaled then end of the first act. A waiter taking drink reorders from the table of grad nurses blocked the narrow path to her table. Standing patiently, listening with a reddening ear to the emcee's bawdy routine, she heard a woman seating nearby exclaiming of how cute some man to change the tape was. As she turned her head to the array of sound equipment edging the stage, Gabriella was wondering mildly how women could subject themselves to go into ecstasies over another of these vacuous, beef on the hoof jocks. Then her gaze lit upon a tall man, with sandy brown colored hair in jeans and a white sweatshirt.

Never had she seen a face like this one. Carved in simple planes, it contained a strict beauty that carried no trace of prettiness. His hair had the diffuse brightness of sunlight pouring through spring water. Under sable eyebrows, a dark fringe of straight lashes defined eyes of haunting crystalline blue. Small smile lines framed a narrow mouth. The pure facial structure gave the indelible impression of strength, intelligence, and a certain refined tenderness--it was a face built for sweetness. But his brooding eyes were a cynic's. He was here, yet remote from all this; detached. That, and the straight classical proportions below made him look like a statue of the young Alexander.

She was threading the cleared path to her table when one of the nurses interrupted the M.C by calling out playfully, "Hey! Is that guy gonna take off his clothes?"

Gabriella watched him pretend to ignore the remark as he wound the tape, his narrow mouth turned into a small smirk that suggested that he'd be laughing inside.

Mock-indignant, the M.C made a "naughty-naughty" sign with her pointer finger. "Have you no shame? The kid is barely seventeen years old--" Laughing protests and a suggestive comment or two around the room greeted the obvious fiction. Gabriella would have estimated his age to be a few years older than her own. Grinning, the emcee continued, "I'm ashamed of you ladies and your carnal intentions! And in front of a minor, on top of that! He's the sound man, so behave! Because I've got something for all of you who luh-hu-uvv"--she gave the word three syllables--"law and order: a tribute to our gentlemen in blue! Here's a man you'd love to go undercover with! For your entertainment pleasure, please allow me to announce Peter the Policeman!"

Gabriella landed in her seat just as a magnificent body in a motorcycle cop's outfit complete with silver helmet, shiny black knee-length leather boots, reflecting aviator sunglasses--landed onstage inside a swell of acclaim. Moving at a full throttle and with dynamic professionalism to theme to _Peter Gunn_, he was a riveting figure. If she hadn't known he was about to take his clothes off, she might have enjoyed it a tad.

The light changed again and she tore her gaze away to the side--and discovered that the brown haired man at the sound table was watching her. _Yes, her_. The alluring blue eyes were holding her in a level study. As she sat very still, staring numbly back, she began to read in the perceptive depths of his eyes a heart catching mixture of amusement, sympathy, and interest. For a suspended moment her heart beat oddly as their gazes touched, and then she dragged her eyes away.

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That was the longest thing I've ever written! I honestly think it wasn't that good. You can agree or disagree! Just read and review! XOXO, VG 3


	2. Chapter 2

Summary: She lives in a world of innocence and romance. He lives in a worldof garish lights and pulsing music. Is their love strong enough to create aworld they can share?

I don't own HSM. Kenny Ortega does. Nor do I own this story.

3

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_.Lightning That Lingers._

_Chp. 2_

Looking everywhere in the room except the stage, in a harried effort to avoid the trauma of finding out how Peter the Policeman measured up (which was very well according to the wild applause surrounding her), she had time to wonder how much of what she had seen in those blue eyes was a trick of her imagination, or the stage lights. Subliminal chemistry was doing rather uncomfortable things to her, but she told herself it was probably due more to the awkwardness of all of this than to a direct response to a man who'd looked at her once. She was too self-conscious to risk another glance toward him until the policeman had left the stage--out of uniform.

The brunette man at the sound console was making an array of adjustments to the apparatus in front of him, the austere beauty of his hands outline against the start mechanics. The practiced movements were done by rote; the far-seeing gaze was softly unfocused as though his thoughts had drifted elsewhere. Appearing from a door on stage right, the M.C. laid her hand on his rear pocket and squeezed gently as she walked by. A tingle of laughter swept through the audience from those who had seen it. The M.C. looked back over her shoulder at the man and his ironical eyes lit slightly as he gave her a smile of bewildering approach before leaving the area by a side door.

"Give us the sound man!" came a shout from the banking group.

The M.C, who had begun to speak, ignored the interruption, but the call for the brunette man spread like a chant through the crowded room. Encouraged by a certain gleam in the M.C.'s grin, the clamor grew in momentum. More and more voices joined the swell. Raucous whistles rocketed toward the stage. Rhythmic clapping erupted. Breaking into laughter, motioning the rebels into order, the M.C. had to shout into the mic to make herself heard.

"All right, all right! Talk about lascivious...I can see you've all had the same thought as I did two years ago when I came upon him sitting on the public pier dangling his toes in the lake, his jeans rolled up to his knees..." She chuckled at the thunder of delight before her. "When I look for men to dance in the club, I'm looking for very special ones. They have to have better than good looks. They have to have better than good dancing ability. I go way beyond that. I look for men with that unique charisma that--well you know what it does to you. As you've guessed: he's not the sound man, he's definitely not a minor, and he definitely _is _a showpiece of the Coup de Grace club! Ladies, we're proud to present the number one male dancer in the Southwest. Here he is, our own native blue-blood to make your blood simmer--"

Amid pandemonium, added to it, Gabriella's confusion because she had not really guessed that the brunette man with the gentle gaze and face like a vision would strip his clothes off for money, he strolled onstage to the beat of "Stray Cat Strut." He was a whimsical blue-collar fantasy in a light shiny hardhat. A form-fitting shirt molded to his upper body, leading the eyes irresistibly downward to the softly faded denim caressing his hips and long thighs. There was a mesmeric quality, and almost playful kinetic energy to his natural grace. Moving to the music with easy sensuality, he pulled off the hardhat in a flow of athletic choreography. The light hair tumbled sensuously, and the blue and hot-silver eyes held a laughter that was at the same time innocent and full of utter deviltry.

"God, he's so..." muttered Sharpay.

The quaking excitement inside Gabriella had nothing to do with embarrassment, though heaven knew she was embarrassed by what she saw, what she felt. The icy ball that her stomach had become was melting all down the inside of her, through her nerves, into pumping pathways that led downward, inward.

He let one arm shrug out of his shirt, one more slowly than the other, the smooth liquid sway of his hips still catching the beat. Gabriella could almost feel the softness of his bare flesh, the heat and steel that came beneath. Her throat could almost taste the light tang of sweat that traced the intoxicating hollows stretched along his muscles. His vitality projected like rocket fire through the room, burning the imagination, flaming the watching bodies.

Soon, except for the flight fabric that left him exposed almost completely in back, he was nude. The purity of clean body lines in the ivory spot carried the wattage of chain lightning. The rim of the low stage filled four deep with women waiting breathlessly to tuck a folded dollar into the tiny garment he wore and to kiss the wide, smiling mouth.

Taylor, who had rushed up to the stage herself, now flopped back in her seat beside Gabriella, throwing one hand over hear heart.

"You've been up there twice," Sharpay said, her eyes sparkling, mirthful.

"I know! I told him I had to come back."

Jennifer leaned toward her. "What'd he say?"

"He just laughed. Jennifer, heavens, don't miss it! How often does anyone get a chance to make magic with a man like that?!" Taylor gave Jennifer a little nudge, and Sharpay tried laughingly to haul Gabriella to her feet. Sticking like a burr to her small chair, thrown further into unfamiliar mental disarray, Gabriella tried feebly.

"I'd better not. I...think I have a cold coming on and I wouldn't want to--"

The end of her sentence was swallowed by the laughter of her friends. Jennifer was saying, "Fie on you, woman! You haven't either!", when Gabriella, whose eyes had been straying helplessly to the stage for no very good real, saw that for the second time this evening, the brunette man was looking right at her. He must have seen the attempt of her friends to pull her from the chair, and her strong negative reaction, because he released the beautiful young woman he was holding. His head tilted in a pantomime of curiosity and tenderness. And then he beckoned to her, his smile roguish, sensual.

Gabriella's fingers clutched the sides of her chair in a death grip. One corner of his mouth quirked upward as he gave her a look of humorous reproach. She finally gave in to her friends and was tugged to that stage, where he seemed to be waiting just for her. Gabriella closed her eyes in embarrassment, but he leaned over to her.

"Hello, lady," he whispered. "Open your eyes." When she would not, he murmured, "I only want to kiss you." She felt the shock of his warm hand gently pulling at her wrists and urging her chin up. Then not persisting in the face of frozen resistance and temptation, he stroked the outer curve of her hot cheek with a soothing finger.

"What's your name?"

Gabriella shook her head helplessly. To her horror she heard Taylor's voice.

"Her name's Gabriella! Gabriella Montez!" Taylor giggled.

Over the girls' laughter, Gabriella heard his voice again. "Gabriella," he whispered. "You know what, Gabriella Montez? I think you're very sweet."

She was not able to watch the rest of his act as he abandoned his final cover to Bob Dylan's melodic rasp. The unfeigned lyrics of "Lay, Lady, Lay" seeped through the loudspeakers. But she knew that it was the voice and the light touch of another man that would stay with her through the night.

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There's chapter two! Read and review! I know there was a blank page and first, but I couldn't upload a blank document. So I just typed something random obviously. XOXO, VG.


	3. Chapter 3

Summary: She lives in a world of innocence and romance. He lives in a worldof garish lights and pulsing music. Is their love strong enough to create aworld they can share?

I don't own HSM. Kenny Ortega does. Nor do I own this story.

:D

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Gabriella was nervous as she locked up the boutique two nights later. There was no reason to be nervous, of course, even though she was alone, because Annalise Paynter was outside, warming up her Gremlin for their shared ride home. But the building seemed desolate in the dim glare of the security lights. She hurried to the back hallway, dragged her camel stadium coat from the hook and zipped it own quickly, fumbling for the brow tweed mittens from the pocket and pulling the matching cuff hat down over her hair and ears. The bitter cold outside made her clench her muscles and stamp her feet as she engineered the heavy locks on the service door. Somewhere behind her an engine ran reassuringly. She turned, expecting to race toward the Gremlin. But the Gremlin was gone. Spent light drifted over the store walls from a distant street lamp and the reflected gleam of the three-quarter moon on the frozen lake beyond carved out an area from the darkness, like a barely lit stage. And withing that stage she saw that the only car in the lot was an aging pickup truck. And leaning on the front of it, one leather boot up on the bumper, was the brunette man whom she had previously seen wearing a lot less clothing. She turned to ice in her tracks. Seeing her, he pushed himself off the bumper and began to walk towards her.

Unsteady pulses thumped in strange places inside her body. Looking frantically around for Annalise, she heard herself utter, "Ms. Paynter..."

"Lise left when I told her I was here to pick you up. She wasn't averse since she was rushing home to catch 'The Maltese Falcon' on cable."

The attractive voice was matter-of-fact, the stance relaxed. His moonlit features revealed no nuances. Trying to cope with the reality of his sudden appearance, she took one hard sustaining breath, feeding oxygen to her poor, besieged brain. Okay, brain, what's going on here? His casual use for the store owner's first name and his just as casual reference to Annalise's plans for the evening were such a severe check that she could only falter,

"She left? Just like that?"

The sensual features seemed to soften as he studied her thoroughly. "You've been abandoned to the wolves, darling. She didn't so much as hesitate. It helps of course that she's known me since the days my eyebrows didn't reach the top of the checkout counter of the library and I was signing out picture books in crayon."

The inside of her mouth and her throat were bone dry and stinging in the cold air. She tried to swallow but she couldn't.

"You just...lied to her?"

"No." His smile entered her senses like wine. He moved closer. "I do want to pick you up. You might as well resign yourself and come along passively."

His strong fingers took hold of her upper arm, propelling her towards the car, and she yelped. "Now see here..."

"I intend to. But not until you're sitting in the car." Amusement edged the easy voice. "I don't want you to freeze the end of your cute, adorable, little stuck up nose."

Though she didn't struggle, alarm made her stiffen as he bundled her into the the passenger seat of the truck, and she was breathing in jerky little gasps as he climbed into the front seat beside her.

A touch of his hand turned on the overhead light, shutting the world outside to a distant blackness, shutting her in a flare of glossy yellow light with the utterly beguiling stranger. Hid face was titled slightly as he studied her, a slow smile teasing at the corners of his blue eyes. One of his hands rested on the steering wheel, the gloved fingers strong and classical in their grace as they curved along the line of the black plastic. He stretched out his hand to rub his index finger once gently under her chin.

"If that's the best fight you can put up when you think something horrible is about to happen, I'm going to enroll you in est. Do you know what's in front of us?"

Her heart had given up its weak effort to do anything more that syncopate, and all she knew how to do was handle this strange thing that was happening to her one moment at a time. She pretended to squint out the blank front windshield before she said,

"A dumpster?"

His eyes had become very bright. "A long night."

"And?" she said with acute apprehension.

"I'd like you to spend it with me," he said gently.

With a low moan, she slid downward in her seat, puling the brown tweed down to cover her entire face. She heard his laughter and the changing purr of the engine as the car moved in reverse, dipping into the street. They traveled down Lake Drive. His hand came to her shoulder and rubbed it lightly.

"It doesn't matter," he said in a kind tone, "there are other ways to do these things. For example, we _could _date, if you think that would be reassuring.  
"

"Well there are a couple people left who still consider dating a romantic situation." She countered.

"Yes. That's why I'm willing, if it would make you feel more secure."

There was no way on God's green earth that she would ever feel secure within ten miles of this man. She tried to inject some frost that twinkled on the side windows into her voice.

"Just what do _you _suggest, Mr.--"

"Bolton, Troy. I believe in a lot of things."

"How did you find me?"

"I asked around, this is a small town you know."

Gabriella digested this while she considered his name. Troy Bolton. The name caught and held in her mind, printing and reprinting over and over again. Bolton had a special meaning in Albuquerque. A grand and eclectic family, they had made a fortune in banking and put it into consolidating small railroad companies throughout the Southwest. Outstanding philanthropists, their names showered the pediments of art centers and libraries all over the state. She had a flashing memory of the emcee at the Coup de Grace club introducing him as a "native blueblood" which she had paid no attention to at the time.

And there was this patrician accent -- never explained. Surely it was impossible for a true Bolton, precious to the state's historical heritage, to be peeling off his jeans like a banana in a racy nightclub. The thought had shocked her more than anything that had previously occurred in this strange evening.

The truck had stopped in front of a mammoth gateway, the tall brickwork and the iron bristling with rank and importance. She saw that it was the portal to the Bolton estate at Lucille Hill. Troy depressed a disk on a small control that sat on the dashboard and the gate swung apart as though it had been whisked open by invisible hands. Gabriella thought immediately of the magical palace in _Beauty and the Beast_. The beast's palace.

"I hope that I don't seem vulgarly inquisitive," she said in a voice that was distinct and polite. "But where in the hell are we going?"

"I'd like to make you acquainted with some friends of mine."

Friends.

"Do they live in a mansion?"

"No." His smile enlarged the word. "In trees."

That set her back. The vehicle traversed fifty yards of a wooded drive and then turned bumpily into a narrow, snow packed lane. Stiff branches pelted the car doors and windows with a clapping rattle. High withered grass reached through the snow to brush the car fram.

"Those friends of yours--they _are _human, right?"

"Gabriella, would I expose you to any of my unsavory associates?" He asked playfully.

His tone was as light as spun sugar, amusement rimmed the corners of the long fascinating mouth, and yet some little understood sense within her seemed to be registering to his subtle anxiety. Surely it wasn't possible that this bossy, sensual person could be that vulnerable.

"Why do you strip for a living?" She asked, her voice raised to carry over the scratching branches. Studying his face intently in the reflected gleam of the headlights, she caught every nuance of his expression as it became a powerful combination of cynical amusement and some darker thing that she barely glimpsed.

Tersely he said, "They pay me." He paused. "A lot. Immense amounts."

She might have pointed out that there were plenty of other jobs that would have done the same without him being required to strip down to next to nothing, even if someone with the last name of Bolton did need money. Instead, Gabriella relaxed back into the seat and into the new and wonderful glow of frivolity.

"More than the Emerald Lake Library, do you think?" she asked. "Can women be cougars too? Do you give lessons?"

"Yes. No. And I'd be delighted to show you how to take off your clothes. To be honest thought I'd be much more interested in results than in technique."

I set myself up for that one, she thought. How interesting of me.

The car stopped. He killed the engine in a small clearing and turned her into the darkness.

"Now we have to wait."

"For what?"

"Our eyes need to adjust to the night. Do you know much about night vision?"

"No." She was beginning to find Troy Bolton more and more fascinating as time passed.

He slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew her into his sturdy comfort.

"Look at the sky. That black velvet sky is just as blue now as it was during the day," he said. "Our eyes don't work well enough to see it. But they still can do so much better than most people realize. Once your eyes are fully adapted they become many times more light sensitive than in bright light. Hmm."

He tilted up her chin on a strong finger and examined her face.

"You must have a higher threshold of bedroom than most of my friends. You're still awake! And," he continued softly, "you've begun to smile, miracle of miracles." His thumb was tracing the curve of her upper lips as they tipped to meet the slow descent of his.

She heard him breath, "Don't stop", just before the paralyzingly sweet meeting of their lips. It felt so good to her, so good, as his mouth moved against the tautness of her lips. Some impulse of the night's magic made her bring her arms up and clasp them around his neck and lean more into his body. His hands moved to accommodate her, pressing her close.

"How long does it take" -- she drew in a shaking gulp of air -- "for this thing to happen to our eyes?"

"In 30 minutes we'll be doing very well. In the meantime, tell me about how you spent your day." His voice sounded slightly breathless as he nestled her against his jacket.

She protested with a startled, uncertain laugh that _nobody's_ boredom threshold was high enough for that.

Smiling he began to ask her questions. What time did she get up in the morning? Was getting up hard or easy for her? What did she eat for breakfast? Did she listen to music or was her house eerily quiet? What did she sleep in? Did she sleep in anything? Some of the questions teased, others titillated. Some were serous and she began herself following the mood of them, explaining the flow of her day, her job, her thoughts, the people she saw and worked with. Never before had anyone explored her life in such lively detail. No one had cared before that she liked apple jelly and beds with fishnet lace canopies, or that she was making a Shaker chair from a kit in her spare time or that she stopped every morning on the way to work at Lake Park to feed the uneaten half of her waffle sticks to the mallards. No one but her mother had asked about the intricacies of settling into a new job and establishing oneself with a talented and experienced staff.

He was probably the most thorough and attentive listener she had ever talked to. She stopped watching to learn whether or not this was only the elan of some surface charm. She forgot to worry. Time passed, a flowing gift.

"I think you're ready now," he said softly.

She jumped.

Laughing gently at her belated alarm, he climbed out of the car and held her door open invitingly.

She knew that the hours that followed would live in her memory forever. The forest was a jeweled world. Snowflakes glittered on clumps of puffy snow caught on tree branches. The ground twinkled as if it were strewn with chipped stars. Night breezes lulled the high scalloped tree crows and cast the incense of damp cedar into the moist, snow-spangled air.

She could pick out details in the moonlight as if it were day. As she turned slowly, looking around her in the dazzling silence, Troy took buckets from the back of the car and filled them with kibble-style dog food. He handed her a stack of tin pie plates and began to walk with her toward an opening in the forest wall, their footsteps muffled in the dense, snowy carpet. She forgot about the cold.

"Where are we going" Her low tone matched his. "Do you have a kennel here?"

"No." He smiled. "I have wild friends."

In a meadow bathed in starlight, she watched Troy fill the plates and put them of the ground. Then he took her face in his hands and kissed her once, slowly, passionately, and she tasted the mist of his breath and snowflakes.

Like a dreamer, she walked hand in hand with him to the meadow's edge where he took her in his arms bridal style under the canopy of a willow. Amid the ice droplets that glistened like tear shaped gems at the tip of each branch he caressed the snowflakes from her lashed with his lips. Then he lowered her, turned her back toward the meadow, and stood close behind her; his hands spanning her waist to hold her comfortably.

Soon raccoons emerged, masked bandits from the darkness. Trundling towards the pie plates with heads low, backs humped up, chittering to each other. They reminded Gabriella of the early crowd at a dinner. They ate methodically, their paws working like little black hands. Some dipped the kibble in the stream, leaving a mess. Plentiful as the food was, once or twice out there was some greediness and a spat broke out. It was hard not to laugh out loud. Troy's voice, soft as the harp-song of the breeze in the pines, began to tell her about the animal; about the amiable little skunk who couldn't seem to understand why everyone avoided her, about the raccoons and how many seasons he had known them. Later he told her about the red fox that stole with alert concern across the meadow and the great horned owl that flew above the trees with the silence of an angelic spirit. The winter night opened as a fresh universe, warm with personality and purity.

As the moon peered over them at the stark tree limbs, she watched muskrats take scraps from Troy's hands. A porcupine lumbered up to him and greedily took the remnants of food and scattered off.

After they had watched for a long time, Troy led her back to the truck where she sat on the tailgate, drinking warm coffee from a thermos, a red plaid wool blanket spread over her lap. She gazed in new wonder at the snowflakes he caught on his jacket and showed her through a small illuminated magnifying lens. Each separate crystal carried its own divine beauty.

Then his gentle hands laid her back on the bed, stroking her cheeks, parting the zipper of her parka and his jacket to bring their bodies closer together. He held her, just held her, and told her about the legends of the night, the forest; and about the spring that would soon come and the animal young that would fill the trees and streams.

And she was enraptured.

Finally he returned to her doorstep in the dewy mantle of a setting moon. Then and only then did he kiss her once more, gathering her to him with heartlifting care, bringing his mouth to hers, holding her in a deep and steady kiss that they both broke from, breathing rapidly and hard. For a long and helpless moment she met his wantonly beautiful gaze. Then he touched her forehead lightly with a graceful finger, whispered,

"Sleep well," and he left her.

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Well there's chapter three! I wrote more than I planned as a gift to my readers! So I want plenty of reviews. Try to get me to at least 10 or 15! XOXO, VG.


	4. Chapter 4

Summary: She lives in a world of innocence and romance. He lives in a world of garish lights and pulsing music. Is their love strong enough to create a world they can share?

I don't own HSM. Kenny Ortega does. Nor do I own this story.

:D

This chapter is dedicated to Allie (**ZanessaLover247**)!

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Habits die hard. By morning, Gabriella had begun to worry. The reassurance of Troy's presence might have helped, but by midweek he had not tried to see her. And that brought home the torments a relationship with a man like Troy Bolton would cause. He was not a stranger to her, and never would be again, and yet she had no way of knowing if he hadn't called because he was busy, or indifferent, or complacent. Or if in that one night together he had satisfied whatever instinct that impelled him to pursue her.

She had tried to see herself clearly, with her strengths and weaknesses. She was romantic, and filled with a thousand picture dreams of how the world ought to be...and only rarely was. Some of the most enchanting hours of her life had been spent in Troy's forest, but any relationship she had with them would have to be lived in the real world. She knew that she was not composed emotionally for the heavy lightning of spectacular love affairs. She needed things around her that grew and lasted. She needed security.

She shed tears and faced the truth that Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez just weren't meant to work.

She would just have to tell him so when she saw him again. Or _if_ she saw him again.

On Friday afternoon, Gabriella was sitting alone in the back of the boutique she was employed at, and was supposed to be doing inventory. She was so involved with work and her emotions that she didn't hear the door open or shut behind her. She first realized that she wasn't alone when she felt a gentle finger locate the slight hollow behind her neck and traced slightly and carefully downward. There was no mistaking her body's reaction to that magical touch.

"Troy!" She swung her swivel chair around to face him.

"Hello. I've missed you terribly."

An easy motion of his hand brought down a chair in front of hers and he sat down facing her, his body very close, one of his knees separating hers. Her breath caught at the sudden pleasure-filled uplift in her abdomen from the pressure of his leg inside her thigh. Her gaze dropped involuntarily to his legs. There was a mesmeric fascination in the way his lean muscles tugged at the age polished denim and she found herself following the taut line upward with her eyes until it occurred to her what she was doing.

Her gaze flew to his and held there suspended in the perception and tenderness and dancing light she saw in his eyes.

Her deepening flush and steady wide-eyed gaze, the engaging rise and fall of her chest against the light fabric of her blouse, the dusky barely parted lips, were drawing deep-rooted answers from his senses; and his desire to have his arms filled with her became almost as great as his desire to make her smile. Holding her waist in a tight clasp, he drew her towards him, setting her on his leg with her thighs straddling one of his. One of his palms slipped upward to massage her neck, bringing her lips slowly toward his.

"Troy, no."

Under his hands he could feel the tense hold of her body, the winsome trembling in her thighs. He could sense her lacerating inner struggle against the violent flame that was the mirror of his own. He searched her expressive brown eyes.

"Why?"

"Because--Troy, please. Let me go. I can't think with my--with your leg between..."

He released her and watched her go to the other side of the room, closing her eyes, catching a shelf in a pale-knuckled grip. It struck him then that she was saying no to more than the kiss. She was saying no to everything. There was an odd despair in her face and he echoed that as he had her desire. In a lifetime of hearing yes, the first shy, sane voice to break the babble that his life had become, was telling him no. Don't you want to be my redemption? he thought. He tried to choose what he would feel, to corral and control and confront it, but the emotions were too new, too unfamiliar. All he could do was ask again,

"Why!"

The subtle tracing of feeling she had seen earlier on his face seemed to have vanished and she began to wonder if it had been there at all before. The blue eyes were only clear and curious, no longer hypnotizing and enchanting. The long mouth, relaxed. She had never felt less articulate.

"It would be too complicated," she said.

His head tilted slightly. His eyes affected interest. "Is that based on something concrete or is this more of the 'I don't trust men because they're strange and have body parts that change size' doctrine?"

"If you think I'm that ridiculous, it's a wonder I intrigue you at all."

That drew a smile.

"It's because I strip isn't it? Don't worry about that. I'm sure everyone who sees the show is only interested in my mind. She turned away fighting to enforce the slipping hold on her willpower. He came to her and caught a firm hold of her shoulders bringing her to him. She sensed something in him that reminded her of exhaustion as he laid his forehead against hers, his fingers gently kneading through her thin blouse.

Logic evaporated like steam as his mouth moved in a soft eddy over hers, dragging her lips into fragile openness. With a seizure of need, she melted forward into the firm and welcoming frame, her restive sense seeking him, learning his pliant flesh, the complex detail of projecting bone structure, the sensitive strength of her hands. Her fingers found her shoulders, the sides of his face, winnowed the fawn-soft delicacy of his hair. Each part of her the pressed his body stung with the tingling hunger to know more of him.

The reality surface again, and Gabriella remembered where they were, who he was, and pulled away.

His hands left her, resculpting themselves quickly to her cheekbones, his thumbs gently lifting her chin.

"When you--" He stopped, taking in a betraying breath. "When you decide to pull your head out of the sand, come see me. You know all the places to look."

He left her with a hammering pulse and the image of his mouth burned into hers. And she knew the moment she let him walked out of that door was a mistake. No woman in her right mind would have let him walk out of her life. Because Troy Bolton had won. She liked him. She desired him. More, she respected him. She made an important discovery about human nature. One didn't always hand one's heart to another human being. Sometimes, it just went against the owner's will.

That night, after the store closed, she directed her car toward the mansion at Lucille Hill. She knew only one thing. IF she was going to Troy Bolton, she would have to do it quickly, before thought returned. Quickly and without thinking, like a paratrooper making a jump into fog-saturated space.

An arctic cold front had sliced that state and the steadily dropping temperatures were keeping the prudent indoors. Traffic was light on the country roads. Across the lake, she could see the lights of the village as a distant that threw fading streamers on the lake's frosty glass. Within the curtain of the trees, the towering ramparts of oak and maple, there was no light except from the headlamps, piercing far in the clear, frigid air, yet revealing little beyond smokey tunnel glimpses of road and brush. The cold seemed to burn out even light.

Her nerves were fine and tight, overstretched cords, by the time Troy's gateway loomed at the deserted roadside. The iron-wrought gate was closed shut. If it was locked, she wasn't sure what she was going to do.

Wind-drifted snow obscured twenty or so feet leading to the gate. That meant trouble for the Beetle, so she crushed the accelerator, seeking momentum as she made the turn. But it may have been too much momentum, because the little car landed on the driveway with a hop, its rear wheels catching in a hidden ice patch. The car sloughed around, showering snow powder, and spun off the drive, the engine-heavy rear end pulling it down a steep incline into a snowbank.

She was not thinking clearly beyond the monologue in her mind on her own stupidity when she got out of her car to assess the situation head-on, leaving the engine running. More rattled than she knew, working on automatic reflexes, she stood in the snowbank, locked the door and slammed it shut. Then automatic faded to comprehension and she stared in disbelief at the silver key ring dangling back and forth, separated by a pane of glass. The swaying circle mesmerized her, and when it stopped she crossed her arms on the sloping yellow roof, buried her head against the chill fabric of her parked, and groaned in frustration.

Her body awoke all at once to the cold. It framed her face in iron, wept like damp acid through her pants, blared in her muscles. Her stadium coat was fine for twenty and thirty degree weather, or for running from car to work to car to house. Tonight, it might have been Kleenex.

The large gates were locked, but there was a smaller entrance not far down the wall that was open. She ran down the rutted driveway from the slanting headlights of her VW, headlights that were shooting aimlessly into the swaying leaf-stripped trees above her head.

Night closed around her as the drive curved. The stars twinkled in a cloudless black sky, too distant for comfort. The trees arching over the drive seemed in their thrashing malevolence to want to deny her the small solace of the sight of the stars. The wind keened, a predatory chorus.

She looked up and suddenly saw it. The Bolton mansion.

Still distant, it rose from the hilltops, a hard forbidding silhouette. Faint light from etched-glass windows on either side of a grand formal entrance. In the flat moonlight it appeared huge, institutional, charmless. There must be someone home here. There must be. Relations, servants, Doberman pinschers...People didn't leave their mansions unprotected, did they? Her min fastened on _Upstairs, Downstairs_, cataloging episodes, examining habits of the rich.

The rich didn't strip! Why did _he _do it? Rebellion? Hard times? How hard could times be when you own a prestigious mansion and you're swimming in dough?

All at once, the snow heaved under her feet. She toppled though an underlying brittle crust into two feet of water. The pristine surface had hidden a spring-fed brook. Like frigid poison, the icy water bled through her clothes, lacerating her raw flesh, washing her in agony and convulsing her muscles.

When she stood at least, she could her herself weeping. Pain came in racking paroxysms beyond any threshold she could have imagined. Winded, her body heaving with shudders, she tried to aim her clumsy steps toward the mansion and for the first time in her life, she considered the fact that she might die tonight. Death. She rarely thought about it. It seemed like something removed her from her mundane life. But if she didn't get help, she really might die. Her picture would be in newspapers and people with busy lives would scan the article and say "how sad, she was so young." But dumb. So dumb to have her keys locked in a car on a night when the chill factor was 60 below 0.

There was no exact moment when she realized that her intellect had begun to malfunction. But distantly, she knew. Her actions pierced her awareness in sharp disconnected detail. Sorcery seemed to transport her from place to place.

She was pounding her fists on the mansion door.

She was trying to break through a window.

I'm freezing to death, she thought. Me. Gabriella Montez. Won't everyone be surprised...she tried to cudgel her mind into coherency. She tried to recall whether she actually knocked on his door or if it was just a figment of her imagination. She tried to think. But thoughts vanished as if someone was forcefully plucking them one by one like feathers, out of her mind.

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Well, that's chapter four! Will Gabriella freeze to death, and be tomorrow morning's headline; or will Troy finally hear the pounding and come out and save her? Only time will tell, but you have to review first! XOXO, VG.


	5. Chapter 5

Summary: She lives in a world of innocence and romance. He lives in a world of garish lights and pulsing music. Is their love strong enough to create a world they can share?

I don't own HSM. Kenny Ortega does. Nor do I own this story.

:D

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The first thing Troy saw was the ditched Volkswagen, keys in the dead ignition, doors locked, the headlights faded to the pencil beams of twin flashlights. It could have belonged to anyone. But in his heart, he knew it was Gabriella's.

The wind's savagery had nearly destroyed the slight dents of her footprints leading up his drive. Fear nourished his impulse to break out in a run, following them. But he made himself get back into the station wagon; he made himself go slowly up the drive to be sure the dim trail didn't lead off into the trees. He had spent years learning how to decipher tracks, and as though she had left a story for him in copperplate, he could see each stumble, each time she had rested or paused in confusion. The pressure of an accelerating pulse, stabbed his throat; his heartbeat became militant, electric. The phrase, his phrase--"you know where to look" came back at him like a whips. Where had he expected her to come? The Coup de Grace club?

Her waifish figure finally appeared in his headlights, limping in a ragged ellipse about twenty yards from his front door. He floored the accelerator and spun up the drive, running up to her.

Frost covered her in sparkling dust. It rimmed her eyes with blue-white lashes. It was embedded into her clothing like a mica in a sidewalk. When he lifted her face, her pansy petal eyes stared up at him unknowingly.

"I'm looking at..." She squinted at the shining crystals on her sleeve. "Snowflakes." Her voice was hoarse, small, shrill, and slurred.

Shock? Delirium? He tried to remember everything he could about hypothermia. His mind threw up a blank screen. His shooting heartbeat set the rhythm for his instinctive response. He swept her up into his arms and began racing with her towards the house. In this adrenaline-like state, she was no heavier than a toy.

Supporting her limp weight in one hand, he dragged open the front door and lifted her inside. She mumbled incoherently as he carried her upstairs through the blocks of indigo moonlight on the landing. He booted open his bedroom door and set her down on his bed where she lay on his yellow quilt like a broken doll. His hand slipped under the muffler to touch her cheek. It might have been ice.

He grabbed the receiver of his bedside telephone and dialed rapidly, forcing the dail. When it began to ring he tucked it under his shoulder and chin and started to pry at the ice encrusted zipper of her coat. Her clothes, moisture saturated, had frozen to rigidity. An anonymous, monotone voice came on the phone and informed him, after he asked, that Dr. Chad Danforth, wasn't available. He snapped out that this was Troy Bolton and an emergency. The bland voice advised him glumly that he would be connected.

Chad's voice rumbled, "I don't know who the hell this is but it better be important."

"Chad, this is Troy. Can you come over?"

"Troy?" The voice sharpened. "What's going on? Are you alright?"

"Yes, but I found my friend outside in the cold. She looks like a snow cone."

Even more sharply, "Is she conscious?"

"Semi."

"Other symptoms?" Chad snapped out.

"Ataxia, dysarthria, disorientation. And the damned zipper is frozen shut."

"Steady. All right, what's her pulse?"

He dragged off her mitten and found her wrist.

"Dear God, I can't find one."

"Be calm." The voice became deliberately healing, stern, sustaining. "If she's semi, she's alive and she's got a pulse for sure. Maybe it's thready but you'll eventually find it. I'll be there in a minute. Pull her clothes off and put her under a blanket. _Don't_ put her in a hot tub, and _don't_ put her in a heating blanket. It'll throw her into shock. Did you catch all that?"

"Yes, of course. W-what about an ambulance?"

"We'll decide when I get there." The line went dead soon after.

After he hung up, the thawing zipper broke free and as he brought it past her waist, he saw her brown orbs focus on him with sudden lucidity.

"What's ataxia?" The words were very clear, but very hoarse as well.

"Gabi? Sweetheart, this is Troy. Do you know me?"

"Ataxia," prompted the periwinkle blue lips softly.

"It means loss of coordination." He told her gently.

"Thanks." The barely audible word was sardonic. She seemed to be trying to smile. "Dysarthria?"

"Slurred speech."

"Why do you know these words?"

He raised her shoulders enough to drag her coat off. "I'm a biologist."

"Biologist. Biologist." She gave the word various amazed inflections.

He had a moment to be elated over that evidence of rationality before her eyes closed and she seemed to drift again. She shivered so pitifully, it wrenched his heart. He would have given everything to be able to rid her of her pain.

Two minutes or two hours later Gabriella felt the bedclothes shift over her and the robe--she realized she was wearing a robe now--gently rearranged. The hard circle of a stethoscope pressed beneath her breast.

"Beautiful heartbeat," said a voice. "Come and listen. You'll feel much better." The stethoscope rattled as it came away from his ears. "What did I tell you? She's young and healthy. Probably won't even catch a cold on you."

The bed shifted; a graceful hip curved hers. After a moment, the metal disc was removed and her robe was carefully closed, the blankets pulled up around her neck. She blinked her eyes and focused on Troy Bolton. Pale light haloed his brown hair. The sparkling blue eyes held hers in a thorough study.

"Gabi?"

"I just happened to be in the neighborhood." She said weakly. "So I'd thought I'd drop by and merely freeze to death on your very own front lawn."

She had time to see the smile enter his eyes before she had to close her own in exhausted effort. She felt him bring his finger slowly down her cheek, his touch skimming like a breath.

"Don't worry about anything, Gabi." His hand touched her hair. "I'm taking care of you. Sleep."

Behind her closed eyelids, she could sense the room suddenly falling into darkness, but his hand still stroked her beautiful locks.

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There's chapter five! You guys knew he would save her! So what happens after this? You'll find out if you read and review! I need lots of love to get lots of updates! XOXO, VG.


	6. Chapter 6

Summary: She lives in a world of innocence and romance. He lives in a world of garish lights and pulsing music. Is their love strong enough to create a world they can share?

I don't own HSM. Kenny Ortega does. Nor do I own this story.

:D

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She woke again to an unearthly glow. White sunlight blazed through the shutter in long, narrow beams, bouncing like smoky spears from every surface. Warmth permeated the air with the sweet lavender like scent of age. As she inhaled and stretched the beguiling mixture seemed to reach deeply inside her, healing parts of her that had always felt unfledged, cold, and lonely.

Last night's memories returned in the form of liquid pictures, as though she were seeing their undulating reflection in a puddle. She had been cold, then horribly cold--then cared for.

Looking around her, she tried to absorb some sense of Troy from the things around her. She had never seen a room like this, except roped off with a velvet cord in a museum. From a yellow ceiling sank a frieze and cornice of violet and gold. Harmonizing violet and yellow-silk covered the walls. The somber gold draperies matched the upholstery of a lounge and an easy chair with a footstool. To the unaccustomed modern eye, it seemed strange and yet pleasing, romantic. She lifted her hand to touch the exquisitely carved butternut headboard above her, enjoying the milky smooth texture of the polished wood.

Pain returned as she sat up, brief burning spasms in her muscles that died into stiffness. She noticed her clothes, intimately draped on the lounge seat in a ray of sunlight.

Her pink blouse on top of the pile heaved suddenly as the earth might under a burgeoning volcano and a small face with furious yellow eyes erupted from between her blouse buttons.

She screamed. It came out as a throttled unsatisfying squeak so she screamed once more.

That one did the trick. She heard a door open and running footsteps filled the corridor. Troy shot into the room, his long boned feet bare, his soft cotton jeans teasing the outline of his marvelous legs. His hair was tousled from the passage of the blue flecked wool sweater he was dragging on.

"Gabriella? What happened?"

"An owl! On the lounge!"

It seemed reasonable to expect a decent show of alarm. But showing no alarm at all, Troy strode across the room to the owl, whose head had swiveled sideways to look at him.

"Did you scare her, you bad old bird?" he reproached. "I told you I didn't want you in here."

The bad old bird gave him a stern look in return and hopped to the chair arm, then took off to the top of a lofty butternut highboy.

"You have...an _owl_...for a pet."

"I have an owl for a **pest**. I don't believe in keeping wild animals in their homes so you seem I'm a big hypocrite. Laws protect wildlife from that. But I have a license to keep Chaucer. He's disabled. One of his claws doesn't have much of a grip to it, and he'd have a hard time picking up as much prey as he'd need in the wild."

Her gaze flew back to Troy, hitching his desk chair to the bed beside her, sitting backwards on it with his arms crossed on top, his chin at rest on his forearms. Vivid blue eyes gazed back inquiringly into hers.

A stinging lightness rose into her stomach, her chest held an excited flutter. She was aware that suddenly her body underneath the robe was naked, a sensation that was not unpleasant, but embarrassing. His steady regard was polite, unhurried, yet she found herself stalling as though someone had just placed her under vague pressure.

"You said you were a biologist," she said.

"A wildlife biologist. I'm surprised you remember that."

His eyes had begun to make her cheeks hot. She started to say, "thank you for last night", but there was something awkward and a tad suggestive about that, so she tried: "I've always wanted to be rescued. Thanks for thawing me out."

A half smile. A long searching glance. "_That _we've just begun to work on." He noticed her hand laying at her side, the restless fingers pinching up the bedclothes into an array of small pyramids.

"My luck. I go and give myself to a man and end up with my car embedded in a snowbank, and half frozen to death." The words came blurting out.

His reply was immediate. "Is that why you came? To give yourself to me?"

"Those seemed to be your terms."

Her gaze, trying to stay with is, kept sliding somewhere to the vicinity of his elbow. The blankets at her side looked like a landscape of the Nile Valley. There was a sudden desperate need inside him to make this easier for her, easier than her fierce sensitivity would allow, easier than the inconvenient sense of urgency in his own body seemed to dictate.

"I take back my terms."

"Too late, I'm here." She had wanted the words to sound calm. They came out a little too quickly, too loudly. She felt exhausted and elated at one time. There. It was out. The lot cast, the die tossed. Staring distractedly at the relaxed suppleness of his wrist where it emerged from the blue sweater, she tried to brazen it out.

"If I...that is, if we...together--" She took a steadying breath. "I mean if we were together, it wouldn't be your first time, would it? I mean, _obviously_. Right?"

Touched and rather taken aback by the question, he answered gently, "No, it wouldn't."

"Is this different? Different from the other times?"

"Altogether different." He wasn't sure if she believed him. Words would never be enough. The kaleidoscope of emotions in her face was too complicated to be dissected simply. He wanted to cleanse those eyes of fear. He was almost overcome by the urge to slide his terry robe off her shoulders to reveal her naked body. But that wasn't going to convince her that this was different. Instead, he made himself stand and smile briskly at her, "Well. Breakfast. Your clothes are still on the damp side. Want to borrow something of mine?"

She looked a little less terrified walking down the staircase beside him belted into a clean pair of his jeans, her unbound breasts swaying against the cotton fabric under his long sleeved cotton shirt. Two pairs of wool socks held on his running shoes. She was moving stiffly, sore from the stress of hypothermia on her muscles, but her expression was bright and engaging as she gazed in wordless awe around her.

"Nice little place you've got here," she said as though it made her uncomfortable.

"It's a bear to heat. Maybe you should have a sweater too. Are you cold?"

She wasn't, not really., but something in his eyes made a shiver scamper up her spine and she hugged herself. His arm came around her, tucking her against his body as they walked.

She watched him make her breakfast in a peaceful room lined halfway to the ceiling with hand painted Delft tile.

Sitting with her knees drawn up on a bentwood chair, eyeing him curiously, she asked.

"Did you know that you're extraordinarily good looking?" Maybe it was a stupid question.

It seemed to startle him. He paused in the act of chopping bacon into an omelet, and tossed a glance at her. "No. What do you seem in the mirror?"

He turned back to the bacon. "Adult male homo sapiens, reasonable skeletal alignment, two eyes, one on either side of a nose, average dentition, medium height."

"Oh boy, I hope _I _don't ever look in that mirror if that's what it does to you."

That drew an unwilling smile. "I have a friend--Ryan--who says my looks were wasted on me. He says I could have been a short pot-bellied guy with horn rimmed glasses and never known the difference. He's probably right."

Which seemed to be all he had to say on the subject of having a face that made the world stop and stare. The love inside her never stopped flowing. Once she had came to accept it, the rest came naturally. She moved through the day like a hovercraft, never touching earth. Love, she discovered, had a strange effect on the body. Shivers pulsed through her at his slightest touch. She had body aches from the yearning.

Well-fed, they went to his attic, where rising warmth made the air soft and luminous. A shining lacework of frost sparkled on semi circular windows. Light in bright colors from a stained glass skylight broadcast itself onto quiet surfaces.

Everything here was magical: Japanese lacquered cabinets, oil lamps, clocks and urns, a Victorian pram, beautiful boxes filled with postcard collection, antique toys, Art Nouveau jewelry from Tiffany and Cartier. The photograph albums that he reluctantly let her see revealed a great deal about the Boltons in all their luster. Troy as a child standing in a tilt in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa; skydiving in Austria, on yachts, in private stables with horses, playing football on the White House lawn. Troy with loving parents and grandparents. There were no pictures of him past the age of sixteen.

Finally, in an obvious move to distract her from the albums, Troy walked into an enormous wardrobe in the corner. "Would you like to try on something 'prettier' than my jeans?"

Inside the cedar-lined cabinet was a world of costume that rivaled free access to a storeroom of historic dress at the Smithsonian. There were top hats, satin opera slippers, umbrellas in black silk, hand-painted evening gloves, beaded evening bags, huge elegant hats with flowers or plume and veils. Gowns in rich textiles glowed like old gems in the delicate attic light.

He pulled a gown out, a fairy-tale creation from the turn of the century, of biscuit-colored chiffon with drifts of Valenciennes lace. He held it to her, smiling, and she saw in a daze that the shade matched her skin. Her legs barely held her as she dressed in it behind the clouds and winged cherubs of a French gilt wood screen. Quavering, her heart aloft, she came back out to him.

"You look perfect," Troy said. "Now, let's dance."

Honeyed melodies from the early years of the century drifted from a gramophone with a mahogany horn and the room swirled with color and sound. His voice softly taught her the steps, but it was his hands and body that guided her into them, making the movements simple and direct, a blur of pleasure.

The bouquet of cedar and floral potpourri from her gown enclosed them like the perfume of a spray of flowers. Their bare feet streamed against the warm oak floor, making soft sounds. Her naked skin under the gown felt the slippery fabric move over it in fluid swirls. Her silk petticoats rustled, caressing his legs. They seemed to be free-falling, then blended together, their bodies exquisite against each other in their heightened state of sensual awareness. Each brush together was dulcet, golden.

He stepped back from her, holding her fingers in a light clasp, and the warmth in her body centered, humming, in her fingers were he touched her. She was a little shaky, but the sensation was delightful, and her pulse became a slow uncertain rhythm, holding time as his mouth bent to hers in a nectarous whisper.

His lips moved to hers, sailing lightly against her tense lips, alternating the pattern and placement of his mouth gently, until her mouth grew receptive and tingling, opening to his potent melting kisses. His tongue stroked provocatively against her and then he drew back to kiss her eyelids, her cheeks, her nose. His cheek rubbed hers.

"Gabriella? Do you want to love me now? My soft, wonderful lady--do you want us to be together?"

Sparks grew in so many places inside her. Apprehension nipped at her heels. Virginal anxiety. Ugh. At this age, this ought to be simple.

"I know this might sound crazy, but wouldn't a walk be nice?" She winced internally at the nervous brightness in her voice. "We could bundle up warm and--" The words trailed off and her dignity seemed to sink with them into oblivion. Help! She felt his hands leave her, but not his interest. His tender scrutiny stung her cheeks.

"Why not?" He crossed the room in two long strides to take her clothes from the screen. "We'll pick up your boots in my bedroom. You can take the dress off there."

She stood in place like she'd stepped in a puddle of super glue.

"Come, love..." His smile stroked her, as he walked back to her side. His hand touched her arms, and the glue loosened and allowed her to walk beside him. The glue that held her joints seemed to have loosened too. Her knees kept wanting to buckle on the attic steps. Her heart did double time.

In his bedroom, he closed the door quietly behind them. Her boots were drying near the heating grate. He picked them up and let them drop softly back onto the carpet.

"There. I've picked up your boots, and we've been for a walk. And I want you so much that my eyes hurt from looking at you."

Her pulse began to sprint. "I wonder how you stand me. I'm a basket case."

"No." He lifted her, the gown murmuring against his legs, his face nuzzling her hair. "You just haven't learned how to pretend."

He let her down on the bed so gently she seemed to float against the sheets. She felt the mattress pull as he came down at her side, and his long legs stretched out next to hers. She put her face into his sweater, breathing in his sweet scent through the warm wool.

Not looking up, she said, "The part is coming, I think, when you undo my buttons with your expert fingers. So my romances have always said. I'm widely read, if not..." A soft ahem, "..._experienced_."

"You may have been misled." His finger tipped her chin and trailed slowly down to her cleavage. "It doesn't take much expertise to undo buttons."

Tact, perhaps, had made him bypass comment on her point. Conscientious to the end, she repeated it.

"I've never had a lover before."

"No!" The sternly beautiful mouth affected shock, though there was tender laughter in his eyes. "And here I was, imagining you did this all the time."

He was on his side by her, so close that his breath anointed her skin, his fingertips drawing tingling patterns on her throat. Someone had put her smile on crooked.

"It's eerie," she said, "this process of losing my innocence."

His cheek rested on her hair. "I want to make love to you--I'd never want to take your innocence. I want to give you things. _Good _things."

He curved her shoulders into his arms and covered her mouth with his, staying with her while he laid her down on her back, drawing the gown to bare her shoulders and the soft white curve of the top of her breasts. He pulled back and found her looking up at him, the dense burnt-honey eyes wide and bright. And also petrified. And love-flushed. As an experiment, he picked up her wrist and posed it in mid-air. He let it go and it stayed there. Her earnest expression didn't change. Hmmm, he thought. This was going to take a little imagination. Inside he was melting with laughter and sympathy. He disciplined his face and observed in a soft tone, "You seem tense, love."

"I do?" Her chest heaved with the effort of breathing.

He rolled onto his back, his smile sensual and his blue eyes fetching. "Maybe you should set the pace. What do you want to do to me?"

The luster in her eyes became a glow as she studied his face. Then she delighted him by saying, "Hadn't you better be careful? What if it was something truly debauched?"

"I'd count my blessings. Go ahead. Debauch me."

Shaky but eager, her fingers pushed his sweater upward to expose his chest, and he arched his back to help her. Her fingers spread wide open over his chest, her warm palm nestled in his light, springy hair. His breath came in long slow swells, deepening at her touch. A drowsy look came upon his eyes.

She was a trespasser, she followed his chest, his throat, the angles of his jaw and face. The shyness left, drifting off, and she laid her hand on his flat muscled stomach where it lifted and lowered with his relaxed breathing. She slipped her hand lower and he stirred, his breath quickening, and she realized that he wasn't as relaxed as he looked. A strange excitement quivered through her as he helped her remove his trousers.

Then his strong hands sought her hips, pulling her up to straddle him. "Come up."

Her desire pressed in her throat, inside her thighs, and she braced her palms giddily against his shoulders. His hands slipped under the dress hem, caressing their way up her legs, inflaming the bare and delicate flesh, curving over her bottom and gathering her into his hands. Gently she was pressed into him, against him, in a skillful motion that kindled a soft cry from her, and a spreading flame in her nerve centers.

"Troy--"

"I know." His head lifted. His tongue caressed the jumping pulse in her throat. His voice was soft, husky. "I understand. Alien me, vulnerable you...it'll be alright. It's just love. Me loving you, and you loving me. That's all."

He pulled away long enough to draw her dress gently over her shoulders, freeing her from the rippling folds. His hands, warm as sunlight, found her, and her sharp inward breath lifted her ribcage, thrusting her breasts into the exploration of his hands. His lips followed where his fingers led, his silken-gold hair was a heady caress on her hot body. They were drifting together in a storm of sunlight, dancing molecules, the stuff life was made of. He couldn't give her enough, pleasure her enough. His love was open and flowing to her, and he wanted to give and give. His senses registered each shiver of her body, every pulse.

Thought shut down for her, and she only felt the updraft of her ascent. Icy wires of feeling immersed themselves in her nerves, hot waves spun through her muscles. Her flesh blazed. Then the ascent spiraled, and her temperature pitched, plummeted, and leaped upward in a devastating fluctuation. The sunlight came inside...

"My Gabriella," he murmured, pressing his lips low on her throat. "I love you. I love you." And his hands were gently on her body, guiding her sweetly as they had in their dance, and together they saw dreams.

* * *

Well there's chapter six for you! As you can tell by the vivid descriptions, it's pretty clear what they were up to. And I guess this finalized their relationship! Sadly, there's only one chapter left! Read and review! XOXO, VG.


	7. Chapter 7

What's happened to my reviews?

I haven't gotten any for Lightning That Lingers in three days!

Not to sound greedy or anything, but I do like feedback!

And the story is coming to a close soon, sorry!

This isn't just a note of me doing a tiny bit of complaining, but it's a notice for you to read and review my three new oneshots: Blue City, Trust, and Tender Blue Eyes!

Thanks, and much love;

VG.


	8. Chapter 8

Summary: She lives in a world of innocence and romance. He lives in a world of garish lights and pulsing music. Is their love strong enough to create a world they can share?

I don't own HSM. Kenny Ortega does. Nor do I own this story.

Unfortunately, this is indeed the last chapter of the story. But another Troyella is in the works, so don't be too upset! Enjoy the last chapter of Lightning That Lingers!

* * *

The light was beginning to show around the drapes a few hours later as Gabriella lay in a dream state, gazing at Troy, running her fingers over his skin, making invisible patterns and shapes for how long she wasn't sure.

"So you're finally awake." She teased, as he slowly opened one eye.

"I've been awake for a while now." Troy said groggily, while stretching out his arms to embrace her.

"Then why were your eyes closed?"

Smiling, Troy opened the other eye. "Because I was enjoying the way you chose to wake me up"

"You're bad." Gabriella informed him.

"I thought you said I was a nice guy!"

"That was before I saw the other side of your personality."

"What side could that be, Miss Montez?"

"The one that drags a poor, defenseless, innocent girl up to his bedroom--"

"I don't remember much dragging." Troy interrupted.

"--and makes wild, passionate, love to her--"

"That I remember."

"--so that she wants to stay in bed forever and ever."

"Did I mention that I'm also the obliging type?" He asked, kissing her with a thoroughness that made time stand still.

"Look at me," he commanded when her eyes drifted shut with a sigh. "This time I want to see my touch reflected in your eyes. I want to see them darken with passion. Keep them open," he urged.

"I'll try," Gabriella whispered, struggling against the desire to relinquish control of her body. "Only if you promise to not stop doing what on earth you're doing to me."

"I couldn't even if I wanted to," he assured her. "And I certainly don't want to."

-

-

-

-

Several hours later Gabriella ate an orange in the butler's pantry, and watched Troy start dinner.

"What do you think are the chances of your becoming bored with me quickly?" She bit into a segment and soon discovered, to her dismay, that he didn't buy seedless oranges.

"None."

"What if I asked you a thousand and one questions about yourself?"

"I'd give you a thousand and one answers. Please, for God's sake, don't be silent. I want to know you're here with me. Every single minute."

His words gave her a secret shiver of glee, but somehow the nosy personal questions were slow to come. Instead she said, "Do you remember having a butler?"

"Yes."

"What was he like?" She said, taking another bite of her orange.

"German. Very Gothic face. His eyes looked like they could burn the wall. He scared the pants off my mother. But he played a mean game of cribbage, and he taught me to ride a bike in the side courtyard."

"Why do you call this the butler's pantry?"

"This was his domain. He ran the house from here. See the inner window above the maple cupboard. That's the servant's staircase just behind it. He could watch their comings and goings. Through that door," he pointed, "was the formal dining room, and there's a panel missing, as you can see, so he could overhear the dinner conversation and intervene with a new course whenever it was tactful. It has a medieval flavor, being rich."

She had been raised to believe that financial matters were deeply personal, and there was something uncomfortable about asking a lover what his income was, but damn it all. This was relevant. She drew a breath that left her feeling lightheaded.

"Troy," she asked, "are you rich or poor?"

He glances at her and found she was watching him with friendly interest, her brown orbs peaceful. The image returns of seeing her that first night at the Coup, her face among the maze of faces, her burnt honey eyes looking at him different; like a man instead of a lab animal. He had seen the regret and disappointment come into them when he began to dance. After that, he'd had to open up his soul to her to show her that he was real, a process that had not been without his terrors. Here they were together. It should be simple, yet it wasn't. The idiocy of his job stood between them, more now that it ever had. There was nothing he could do except to anticipate grimly the moment she realized how much,

"What people think of as the great Bolton financial empire has been overextended since the Depression. There was a brief comeback during the second World War when the railroads did pretty well hauling scrap metal, but after that things tottered for years. And my parents were...very gentle people, not business brains. They made the best decisions that they could, but it wasn't enough." A memory surfaced, like a sharp stab, of his father sitting with him on his bed at dusk, explaining in a raw and unfamiliar tone that they had failed to save his heritage for him. "To have kept it alive they would have had to love money more, and they couldn't. Lucille Hill was our summer house. When I was sixteen they had to sell the house and we moved back to Albuquerque permanently. They both died within three years of stress-related things. When they died, I grieved intensely, and when the grief left, I just shut down inside..."

"Troy--I'm so sorry."

He came to her, cupped her face, and kissed the tip and slope of her nose. "It was a long time ago."

"Couldn't you find work as a biologist?"

"Not close enough to live here. Not one that would pay enough to take care of taxes."

"It's important for you to keep the land." She made her words a statement, and even so, saw emotion tighten every muscle in his face.

"This land is a wildlife preserve. It's been in my family for generations. I'd sell the bones of my ancestors to a dog kennel before I'd let developers slice it up into subplots. God knowns I don't want to keep it. I've been trying to give it to the state but they only want to accept it as a park.." He reminded himself consciously not to leap on a soapbox. "Parks are fine. They have a place. But people don't have to have every damn acre of the earth to tramp over. Some animals adapt to public access, but many species are profoundly disturbed in the natural course of their lives--finding food, caring for young selecting mates. All you would have needed one trip to Yellowstone Park ten years ago to see the bears begging at car windows like hookers.." The soapbox. One more sentence: that's all you get, Bolton. He could see the distress building on her face. "Park land tends to serve people, not animals."

She was quiet for a moment before speaking. "Will state officials change their minds?"

"I hope so. It's going to be a challenge to dance my routine with arthritis."

-

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-

-

In the week that followed they spent all their mornings together, and memories collected in her mind like little intimate postcards: Troy in the snowy woods kissing her brow under the golden brown leaves that clung to an oak; Troy drawing her back from a daydream by touching the glossy softness of an owl feather slowly under the curve of her bare knee.

Her mind retreated from the thing he did when they were apart, shunning it like a bad neighbor. She deceived herself that she was tolerant. She had a constant "heart-in-the-throat" feeling, an elated yet teetering happiness.

Gabriella was alone on Friday night, closing up the boutique, damping down the image of Troy at work. Or trying to. But the thought of him on stage, the thump of a hard-rock beat, seemed to pursue her through the darkened rooms. Her imagination conjured up visions of gorgeous women staring at his stuffing bills into his..

No. She couldn't let this go on. She knew it was time she faced her fears once and for all.

* * *

OK, so this isn't the last chapter. I tried to leave it with a cliffhanger; but I can say that the next chapter is indeed the final one! Read and review! XOXO, VG.


	9. Chapter 9

Summary: She lives in a world of innocence and romance. He lives in a world of garish lights and pulsing music. Is their love strong enough to create a world they can share?

I don't own HSM. Kenny Ortega does. Nor do I own this story.

There's references of alcohol in this chapter, though it is slight. If it disturbs you, tough cookies.

Unfortunately, this is indeed the last chapter of the story. But another Troyella is in the works, so don't be too upset! Enjoy the last chapter of Lightning That Lingers!

* * *

The Coup de Grace club was crowded, smoky, festive, nearing the end of the second show. Gabi sat in the shadow of a pillar, alone with her agony. Deaf to the ecstatic screams around her that were urging _her _lover to uncover his stunning body, she watched Troy strip.

He was dancing to yet another Sister Sledge song, the athletic grace of his body released in a sensuous flood that arrived dead center inside each beat. His shining, light-rinsed hair moved and swirled with him. She knew intimately the precise relationship his body had with rhythm. She had learned its accuracy in love. She could still feel his against hers.

He didn't see her, and that was probably the best for the both of them. Several time he almost seemed to look right at her, but closer study warned her that it was only a well-conceived illusion. He made no direct eye contact while he danced, nor while he kissed the women, or while neat fingers stuck folded dollars and stripes of white paper with 7 digits and a lipstick imprint into his G-string.

It was, finally, the kisses that were the real exercise in masochism. Visually, they made a beautiful and arousing picture, the women in a series coming into Troy's arms, their clothes bright as butterflies against his golden flesh. She saw what she had missed on her first night here--how stylized those kisses were, how short of emotion. He smiled like an actor, the muscles accurately aligned, the eyes polite, yet the soul: absent. Knowing that helped nothing. This was her lover, his mouth, and every glamorous ritualistic kiss struck at her until she felt ill and violated, boiling in ugly inner emotion.

_I must have been insane to come here. Why am I here?_

She jumped when firm fingers gripped her arm, and like an angry echo of her thoughts, she heard someone say,

"What are you doing here?"

She glanced up into the eyes of Ryan, better known as Peter the Policeman, who Gabriella had met at Troy's mansion earlier that week. Knowing it was childish, not caring, she snapped. "It's a free fucking country."

"The last thing he needs to see is you sitting her with tears running down your face."

She hadn't realized, and she wiped them away quickly as he pulled her though the crowd, past the bold and curious stares, out a door behind the bar into a bleak, quiet hallway painted a strange pastel colour.

"Is this your bed of nails?" he asked, his voice gentle. "Go home."

"I have to talk to Troy."

"Tomorrow."

"Tonight. Now, erm, I mean whenever he's finished."

"Look, he wouldn't want you to see him like this. Do yourself and him a favor and just go home. If you do, I'll tell him to call you the minute he comes backstage, all right?"

No. Not all right. She detected an extra inflection in his voice. "What do you mean, see him _like this_?"

"He's been drinking." Ryan said tightly. "It's hard for him to work since last weekend, and I'm positive you know damn well why."

Seeing that she was not going to follow his advice, Ryan opened a door and motioned her inside. She saw two chairs, a table, a shower, Troy's clothes, a half empty bottle of Jose Cuervo beside a glass. On one wall there was a poster of the earth, the picture taken from a satellite, a majestic deep-blue planet, cloud hung and delicate, frighteningly reduced by distance.

A moment or two passed. Then Ryan said, "Just remember that whatever you have to say tonight, you're going to have to live with it in the morning."

He left. Gabriella heard his footsteps stop in the hall, and his voice speaking to someone she couldn't see.

"Sorry, man." Ryan said.

"What for?" Troy's voice reached her, his words absent and distracted, and then he appeared in the doorway, wiping his face with a towel, clad in only unzipped jeans, one thin gold chain glittering about his neck, another draped around his ankle. Seeing her made him halt there, his champagne colored hair curled damply. His blue eyes seemed to penetrate her like laser beams. Beyond that, his high boned face was stark, expressionless. It altered, beginning to fill with emotion, and he came towards her while tossing away the towel.

He hadn't stopped to question her presence. He simply rejoiced in it. After the many numb years, he was in love, a love that felt like an open wound when his mouth met with any other lips than hers. There were many raw places all of the inside of him, and in the strained and vulnerable state, her body promised sanctuary. Hazy with need, unthinking, he tried to take her in his arms.

"Gabi?" he asked, pulling her to him.

Another time his emotion would have sliced straight to her heart. Tonight he was shellacked in perspiration that made the sinews of his muscles glisten with erotic decadence. The pure fresh fragrance she associated with his body was gone, and the heavy stench of tobacco and a hundred different perfumes clung to his skin, touching her body before he did. His lips were soft and swollen, love-bitten, graphically moist. The fallen angel..

When his mouth sought hers, her hands resisted him, her head twisting sharply away, the gesture reflexive, a creation of instinct.

Her revulsion entered his brain as though it had been injected there. There was a moment of eerie inner quiet, his emotions flattening to a perfect blank, the even pitch of a radio station testing an emergency frequency. His arms slid slowly from her shoulders. He began to back away from her, registering her in his heart--the short tidy hair, her clean fingernails, the long immaculate eyelashes, fragile mouth, fragile eyes. Neat, bright, fastidious you, he thought; soiled me.

He sat down and listened in a remote way to the clatter of the Jose Cuervo bottle against the glass as he splashed it full and swallowed it rapidly. Gabriella was watching him with something similar to horror. Thankfully, the liquor seemed to compose him.

"I knew this was going to happen," he said, "But I thought it was going to take at least a couple of months. That's the one things about you I've always marveled at--I could never anticipate your timetable."

"Look--" Her voice broke. "I tried to tell you that this wasn't going to work. I'm too insecure; I'll drive us both insane."

"So. In the end it all comes back to shame."

"Do you think this is something I feel by choice?! Tell me what to do with it then."

He shot out of the chair, his hand fiercely gripping her upper arm, and turned her to face his wall poster.

"Look at it. Do you recognize it? It's the fragile, finite, Spaceship Earth. Our home. The only home we'll ever have, this lovely tiny ball hurtling through space. We can't leave it. But every year we exhaust more and more of our natural resources. We dump more and more poison into the air and water. We bury more land under concrete. Creatures that have existed for millennia are dying. This delicate, elaborate, ecosystem is being depleted. The earth can't feel its own future: and I can't save it. Please, Gabriella, please. Just let me save this one little piece."

Silence vibrated between them.

"What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say?" Gabriella spoke as her voice trembled and her eyes watered. "You're trying to save vanishing wildlife habitats. That's important. I'm trying to close off your most viable source of income so I'm small and petty and vain. Where does that leave the two of us, Troy?"

"Gabi--" The anguish inside was becoming evident in his voice. "Love. What am I but a collection of bones and tissue, and if people want to pay money to look at that, what does it matter?"

Tears brimmed. She slashed at them immediately with her hand. "How would it make you feel if I was to go sleep with another man?"

A pause. "Not good."

"Why not? I'm just a collection of bones and tissue just like you are, and if someone wants to make sweet love to that, then why should it matter?"

He set the glass on the table more heavily than expected. Gabriella jumped.

"Well," he said. "That impaled me, didn't it. Hoist by my own petard. What the hell is a petard anyway?" He took a hard breath. "I'm not sure you can compare making love with nude dancing."

Looking at him became more and more painful. She turned, staring at the wall. "How convenient it must be not being sure. It lets you skip off toward the horizon, leaving me all alone with the guilt."

His hands sought her shoulders. "Gabriella. Listen to me. I opened my life up to you." Each word arrived with individual urgency. "It's been years since I've done that with a woman."

She began to shake. "Troy, I love you. But it hurts too much."

He tried to turn to her, but she stood rigidly, not allowing it. In the end, he gave up.

"Don't love me then," he said. "You want me. You desire me, then use me. If you've started to love me and it hurts too much, then stop loving me and use me instead. Let me worry about the love. Whatever you do...just stay in my life."

"Troy..." Overwhelmed by what was happening between then, terrified by it, she tried to think, but her brain became an icy sphere; working sluggishly. A sharp involuntary movement clenched in her muscles, and his hands left her shoulders, as though he interpreted it as rejection.

"Get rid of your guilt and use me." His voice came to her from farther away. "Use me. I understand it. It's been happening all my life. You know how old I was when I had my first experience with a woman. Thirteen. My mother's friend seduced me in one of her stables and I learned everything I ever needed to know about having someone make love to you as though you were an object. Lately, of course, they want a private striptease first.

Nausea slammed him in the stomach. That was the last thing he intended to say to her. The last thing...he wondered if he was drunk.

His body tolerated alcohol poorly, and he drank rarely. She shouldn't be here, not now. This time when he pulled her to him, she didn't resists and he discovered she was weeping soundlessly. He fought down the urge to take her into his arms, because of his current state of mind, he wasn't sure what he might do if she pushed him away again. Instead he took her coat from her arm, slid it on her, buttoned it, while arranging the muffler carefully around her neck.

"Keep warm," he said. There was another inner struggle as the tenderness and anxious love within him begged to hold, stroke, and cherish her. Then he whispered, "I genuflect to your purity, Gabi. It's just too late for me to catch up. Go home."

She began to walk to the door, because she didn't know what else to do. She was halfway down the hall before she heard him say, "So long. It's been swell."

--

When Gabriella walked into her apartment, the first thing she noticed was its emptiness. She paced restlessly up and down her living room, unable to sit down and relax. She kept catching glimpses of Troy lounging against the sofa, hoisting her up against the walls, and always with that loving grin on his face that made her heart thump in her chest.

Finally she turned to her final refuge, the one person she could always count on. She picked up the phone and called her mother.

Gabriella talked, and went on talking through two cups and green and rosehips tea and one third of a Kleenex box. When she finished, there was a long, long silence before her mother finally spoke.

"The outer beauty we can discount, since we both know that's fun but hollow stuff. Troy Bolton sounds like he's beautiful where it really counts. You're too smart to let go, and you know it's too hard to find. Gabriella through a handful of tissue roses into the waste basket, rubbed her tiny nose, and said thickly, "And I've been thinking too. Where am I ever going to find another man with an owl?'

"That's my girl."

Gabriella smiled.

--

The forest was a quilt work pattern of silver and slate, fragrant with the damp essence of thawing ice. Water dripped in hidden thickets. Black crystal glass rose in bent fingers from the syrup like slush under Gabriella's boots. She found Troy alone in the raccoon clearing. He was sitting on the heavy limb of a gnarled oak tree about eight feet off the ground. One knee was pulled up to his chest, his arm resting there, his head tipped elegantly back as he gazed upward at a sky full of gauzy clouds and bright stars.

She stood beneath the limb, shoved her hands into her pockets, and said, "You think I could get up there?"

"Leave it to my expert fingers."

She did. No sooner was she beside him, tottering uncertainly, the cold moist bark pressing into her, then she was seized into his arms and kissed her with the ruthlessness and abandon she associated with historical novels that had pirates in them. Blood rushed to every place in her body that he had taught to experience pleasure. At last he withdrew from her so that he could look into her eyes. He was gazing at her as if he couldn't believe she was really in his arms. His gloves came on either side of her face stroking her cheeks, molding to the graceful curves. His eyes were radiant with love, and she found it dizzying to gaze into them.

"I figure it this way," she said. "You can't save the whole world, and I can't save the whole world, but maybe together we can save twice as much of it."

"Is that what you want to do with me? Save the world?"

"It's one of the many, many things I want to do with you."

His thumb slowly followed the outer ridge of her lips. "What are the others?"

She put her hands on his throat and mockingly choked him, nearly spilling them both off of the limb. "That!"

Lovingly steadying her, he said, "What was that for?"

"The '_it's been swell_'!"

He laughed and pulled her close again. "It has been swell." He nibbled at the soft skin below her earlobe, his breath sending a warm lift of pleasure down her neck.

"Can you forgive me, for the crazy way I talked? I don't want to change the woman I fell in love with because she doesn't want me to strip."

"I don't want to change the man whose hand feeds wild birds and grows parsley in a clay pot on his kitchen's window ledge." She closed her eyes and pressed her lips to his thumb. "I love you, Troy."

"I love you too." His mouth replaced his thumb on her lips. Softly withdrawing, he said, "I quit my job."

Her eyes opened.

"There wasn't anything else I could do. It became untenable to go from you to so many." He gave her a lingering kiss. "This is sacred, right?"

Worry, because she was a worrier, began to kick up its heels inside her. "Where are we going to get money to pay the taxes on this land until we can get the state to accept it as a wildlife sanctuary."

Her frequent use of the word "we" delighted him so much that he had to kiss her again. "We have a couple of options. I've been dragging my heels about it, but we could do pretty well selling some of the things I could have in the attic."

"No!" she cried involuntarily.

He began to laugh. "You're going to do worse about these things than I am. Do you know what I was going to do?"

His kisses were making a tantalizing caress on the underside of her throat. Thought fled. "Hmmm?"

"I was going to come see you at dawn," he whispered softly, "when your resistance was weak."

"My resistance for you is _always_ weak."

Her mouth searched for and found his, and it was ticklish for them to both balance on the limb with their arms around each other and their lips clinging and parting. But somehow they found a way.

* * *

Well, that's the end of Lightning That Lingers! I hope you enjoyed, and thanks to all those who left reviews and such! XOXO, VG.


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